they would lean towards china. trouble was, how to contact a regime whose very existence the united states denied. >> we came up with the idea that our ambassador in warsaw should walk up to the chinese ambassador at the next social event in which they were both present and ask for a meeting. and say we wanted to talk. >> this is like a spy thriller. >> absolutely. so there was a fashion show. our ambassador walked over to the chinese and our ambassador chased him down the hallway and finally cornered him long enough to say we wanted to talk. two weeks later, a chinese car flying a chinese flag arrived at our embassy and the ambassador said okay, i'm ready to talk. >> but the meetings led to little progress. in the summer of 1969 with lower bureaucratic channels broken down. kissinger and nixon devised a plan to go straight to the top, right to chairman mao. during a trip of pakistan, they asked yaya kahn to arrange the chinese connection. >> nothing happened for six months, then we got a message from the chinese v